Another Fun Week at the Fair...

The Pennington County Fair has come and gone again and even though we didn't enter the animals this year, we still had a great time with the rides, food, and exhibits. The boys got their cartoon caricatures drawn together this year and they looked as funny as ever. The caricature artist took Daniel's front Chiclet teeth and exaggerated the gap in them to captured Aaron's famous smile very nicely. I'll have to take a picture of the final result and post it on here, as it's far too big to scan.

Trinity put up a food booth this year thanks to Jeff Liden who cooks at the local American Legion in town. They sold barbecue sandwiches with chips, pop, ice cream, and 1919 Rootbeer floats. We were repeat customers all three nights we went to the fair. I think the booth made over $1,000 a day, so it was a good fundraiser for the church.

The music was great this year, as we watched the Trinity Trio, which now is more like the "Trinity Strings," as the pastor's wife, Julia, is now playing her lute or mandolin and singing with the group. I couldn't talk them into playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," though... We had quite a contingent of Trinity folks there for moral support.

I got the boys unlimited ride passes this year and they made good use of them this time around, though for the most part stayed off the "scary" rides. Aaron did go on the Himalaya ride, which in my day was called the Matterhorn and I think had white knuckles the whole time. He may have gone a second time, but refused to go any further, as he thought he had to hold on too hard to stay in the seat. The Goldsberry's grandchildren were here from Florida a couple of nights there at the fair, so the boys also got to ride with them and other friends. The Drevlows had several exhibits this year in the old arena with Brett making a life-size sculpture out of nothing but baseball cards and the other kids submitting drawing/artwork.

Guy Drevlow won several contests with his and his wife's horses and had some fun apparently with the kids who walked through the livestock barn. He attached a small handheld radio to the underside of one of the horse's manes and then stood around the corner with another radio and waited for a young child to approach the horse and then would whisper to the boy or girl as though the horse were talking to them. One of the boys went running to his mother saying, "The horse wants to come home with me, Mom!!" One of the families from Trinity made up almost half of one of the livestock barn displays with several goats, pigs, and sheep (the Kilen family).

The fair wound down with fireworks on Saturday night (see pictures). I tried the new "fireworks" feature on the camera and the few posted here really turned out nice.

The boys' baseball season will soon come to a close with tournament week approaching. Aaron's Twins team split their last two games Thursday night (we were there at the ballpark until 9 p.m.) with the Yankees and Dodgers respectively winning the latter and they're now #1 ranked going into the playoffs. Daniel's Reds team narrowly lost their last game against the Cubs. This next week is the end of the season party called the "Summer Hummer" in the Oakland Park at the edge of town with a picnic, carnival games, and dunk tank with lots of prizes for the kids and awards. That should be a fun couple of hours of fun this week. We've enjoyed very nice weather this past week or two with lots of sun, less rain, and some pleasant late afternoon breezes to keep cool at the ballpark. It was 81 degrees yesterday and it felt great. Finally got the lawns mowed, as I know it's gonna rain again tonight or tomorrow and then I'd really be hurting with grass up to my knees. Speaking of things growing like weeds, I harvested my back yard rhubarb plants for the second time this season and donated it to Daniel's friend's mom again who this time delivered us the most delicious dessert made from the rhubarb, kind of a "rhubarb mirangue" (sp?) pie with graham cracker crust and mirangue topping. It was the first new variation of rhubarb recipe I've had since the 1970s. My neighbor still can't figure out how our rhubarb grows like crazy in the shade of a large tree in the back yard. They have rhurbarb in their yard with more than enough sun yet it remains anemic in growth. I gotta get motivated next spring and clear out the back pea patch and plant some veggies, as I think I have some rich soil back there.

Aaron continues to diligently move toward his goal of 10,000 basketball shots by the time school starts up again in a month or so and I've gotten some good exercise shooting baskets with both the boys. The other night the boys had their friend Blake stay over and we all played HORSE the four of us and wouldn't you know it... Daniel won!

That's about all we've been up to since the last post. Hopefully everyone else out there is having a great mid summer. Feel free to send us pictures of your own adventures (Jeff and Katrina???).

Summer Marches On...

Hard to imagine how far we've gotten through summer already. We are well into another season of Park and Rec baseball and it won't be long until it's time to head back to school. We've been busy as usual with everything from baseball as above to movies, lots of visits from Aaron's friends (Daniel's best friend has been out of town for a couple weeks), and activities around town. Last week we all went over to Jim and Olive's house to set up their grandchildren's video game console on their old tv set (so old it doesn't have RCA plugs of its own). Their grandkids are up here visiting from Miami for most of July. We set up the console, but didn't spend much time playing on it, as we were invited to swim at the Franklin pool. It was a very fun learning experience for the boys. They have forgotten most of the lessons they learned at the Y, but they were pretty quick studies when I brought them both in the shallow end for some "lessons from Dad." Aaron was rather cautious about the whole affair given his past experience in Lake Sammamish and to start out, I was holding him most of the time as he got in and out of the pool, but by the end of the evening, he not only got in and out of the pool by himself, but also agreed to walk away from the edge of the pool with water up to his chest about 15 feet out from the edge to give me a hug. He was so proud of his accomplishment and couldn't get enough of it. He even started his own "exercise walking," realizing the resistance of walking through the water was indeed physical exercise. Daniel was rather cute, as he clung to me like Velcro when I brought him into the pool. I just about pried his fingertips off my back to get him back on the deck, but he too got rather comfortable by the end of the night and walked back and forth holding onto the pool edge and then walked out to me a couple of times leaving the edge about 5 feet behind.

We played there at the pool with Jim and Olive's grandkids and a friend of Aaron's until 9:45 last Friday night and it brought back memories of all those hundreds of late evening practices we had for AAU back in the day. Speaking of memories, the showers had the exact same showerheads on them they did in about 1977. They took the record board down, though, in the pool area so not much remains of that era now. I'm excited for the boys to learn to swim, though, as they have a webbed rope that hangs into the deep end from the ceiling and they can climb that if they want for exercise. Aaron is also doing well with his "10,000 Shot Club" for school basketball. He has the summer to shoot 10,000 baskets and we continue to plod toward that target (I won't jinx it here, though, by saying how many he's got so far). We usually head to the back garage and shoot for a half hour to an hour and between 150 to 250 baskets, though the other night he set a record by shooting 312. He really is a good shooter, hitting six in a row with nothing but net. It takes a lot of discipline, as it requires extended attention and concentration, but if he can reach the goal, he'll really benefit once basketball season starts up again.

On the home front, we did end up losing both of our guinea pigs in the span of about two weeks since my last writing here. Rodney passed of what clearly appeared to be a respiratory ailment despite my best efforts to save him and then "Lucky" wasn't so lucky... Lucky was a lot tougher, though, and gave whatever the infection was a run for its money. We just haven't had much luck with the guinea pigs and although we did replace Rodney with a new guinea, I don't think we'll be doing any more after that one. I think Aaron wants to get a rabbit that stays small when its full grown to keep the newest guinea pig company.

The Pennington County Fair is back again this week and thanks to work, I missed the first few days of it. Daniel is walking there tonight with his buddy and Aaron and I will be meeting up with them later on. The new Harry Potter movie is out this week too, so we're juggling our different priorities as of course they want to do everything all at once. They aren't entering their animals this year, though, given the nightmare last year turned into with the loss of Funny Bunny and Snowball. I think we'll just visit the new building with the rabbits and see what Sandy's up to.

We've also gotten our share of sun having traveled to the lake to spend the day at a family friend's cabin and did some fishing (didn't catch anything) and worked on our suntans. Other than that and the above, I've done some song leading at Trinity a couple times so far this summer and I'm supposed to lead again with Carol this coming Sunday and the boys have had about a half dozen baseball games apiece. Half the season has unfortunately been rained out, which is just the opposite of last summer with the drought we had. We've had no less than a dozen thunderstorms this summer and more on the horizon. It was funny yesterday, though. The boys had three games at the college yesterday and I was really feeling guilty as I had to finish some work and couldn't watch their first two games. I dropped them off at the ballpark and came back to finish the work and about an hour later, I got up to walk into the kitchen and looking out the back door I saw water cascading over the window in the door and sure enough we were in the middle of another downpour. There was no thunder, so I didn't have a clue until I saw the downpour upon getting up. Of course it clicked right away in my head, "Uh oh! The boys are probably standing around on a muddy ball field!" I hopped in the Blazer and ran out there as quick as I could to find them wet, but nonetheless all smiles. Aaron advised me that it started raining actually in the very first inning and they called the game off in the fourth (saved by the bell, as they were losing against the Yankees). So I didn't have to feel too guilty after all, as they didn't finish their first two games and didn't play the third game at all. I've done pretty good so far, though, not missing a single game since the season started, though the weather has probably helped on at least one other occasion. The season runs through July and then I think tournament week is the beginning of August followed by the "Summer Hummer" end of the season event, which was at the city park last year just before school starts.

I know there's a lot more I don't even remember at the moment, but I wanted to get what I could on here while I have the moment before I go and get even more busy. Did I mention how nice central air conditioning can be? I have a feeling I'm starting to ramble, so I better sign off for now and head to the fair with Aaron. Until next time... :)

Spring Informance for Daniel...

When It Rains....Well...You Know...

We've had one soggy week, I'm afraid. The boys started their first week of baseball practices out at the college this week, but as of Wednesday, they were rained out and just today (Thursday), they canceled all three of their games (two of Daniel's, one of Aaron's). I've been so busy lately that the lawn in front hasn't been mowed in three weeks and whenever I get the gumption to go out and do it, it rains, which leads to a vicious cycle, as it takes only a light drizzle to set the grass growing like a giant flat Chia pet.

Speaking of Chia pets, we've got another sick guinea on our hands, which one being Rodney, our longest lived pet along with the rabbits we got last year at the fair. Rodney has been quite dehydrated the past few days and we brought it over to Sandy Drevlow yesterday who showed us it was having some respiratory problems going on with some wheezing, so after watching it pretty much lay listlessly in the cage, I figured we should at least try to feed it more aggressively, so we hopped in the car tonight and headed out to Wal-Mart to get some fresh carrots and celery to run through the juicer, then mixed that with ground up food pellets and loaded up a couple syringes full. Rodney obviously wasn't pleased with the concept, but with sunken eyes and difficult breathing, he really needed hydration. I think we got at least one of the syringes of food where it needed to be with the rest down the chin, so hopefully it will help him rebound a little, but I'm afraid he might not make it through the night. With this one, though, I think we at least have a fighting chance, as we know in advance that it's not feeling well, though it takes so little time for a cavie like that to go downhill and if you're not really paying attention you can miss the important signs. It's kind of educational for me, as I'm finding myself drawing on my experience in animal physiology lab at Washington State. We're hoping for the best, as we haven't had the best luck with the really small pets (though the bunnies are still going strong...

The fair is coming up in Pennington County again next month and Aaron is already making sure we don't enter the pets again (as that was when the guineas started dying). He's been a great help with Rodney as we try to nurse him back to health as best we can.

Other than baseball and an ailing guinea, not much else is going on besides work for me. I'm scheduled to lead the congregation in the hymns and liturgy again this Sunday, this time with Marilyn accompanying, and starting next week will be spending a lot more time hopefully out at the ball park with the boys. We might even get a chance to get some fishing in...

Thank you to our fallen soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen this Memorial Day.

A Time for Remembrance...

As this month has come and gone so quickly, I find Memorial Day is almost already arrived again. We've been quite busy with end of school activities, the school carnival, music informances, end of Sunday School, starting summer activities, etc. As I drive out to Challenger several days a week lately, though, I find myself glancing off to the side as I pass Greenwood Cemetery here in town and just noticed today the many wooden crosses placed in honor of local fallen veterans for Memorial Day ceremonies next week. It got me to thinking of all the many people I've known over the years that have left this earth, many before their time, and others who lived long and rich lives and for whom it would never have been a comfortable time to say goodbye. I thought of how people visit their friends' and loved ones' gravesites to remember them on this holiday, but obviously I can't do that for everyone, so I thought I would acknowledge them here in at least some small way.

There are so many people who have touched my life in one way or another, large or small, long or short, but these are the people I miss, that I wish I could have met in person while they were here, or could have stayed here a bit longer in the journey we call "life" so I could have gotten to know them (not necessarily in order of importance): Grandma Judy and Grandpa Paul, Great Grandpa Oscar and Grandma Mary, Great Grandpa Ole and Grandma Odel, Grandpa Ed, Great Uncle Ed, Helen and Doug, Marjorie, Aunt Sue, Ray Mosbeck, Adrienne Sanai, Sarah Villien (CAP), Sandy Heidinger, Ms. Czerkownak, Mrs. Poole, Mr. Fugleberg, Mr. Solsten, Mrs. Desrochier, Mr. McLeod, Mr. Hess, Rayton "Bubs" Dargon, David Cota, Stuart Thompson, Leland Mott, Sr., Kristi Dyrdal, Warren Peterson, Mary from Ida Culver, Iris Nicola, Annie Van Winkle, Lisa from Stevens, Mr. Krause, Dr. Davidson, Jim and Perry (30 years ago this December), and Axel and Louise Stark. Thank you to all the above who have played a role in shaping who I have been, am, and will be in the future. You are all dearly missed, particularly those who died without the opportunity to live your lives to the fullest.

"Requiem eternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis." (Grant unto them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.)

Thank you also to the many veterans who have died for our freedom in previous wars and and the men and women who continue to give the ultimate gift in sacrifice to our country in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world.

Spring Planting Is Finished....

Aaron's Good Buddy, Brock...

In Front of Chief Sitting Bull - UND Arena

Back From a Day at the Circus...

Yes, We're Still Here...

I'm afraid we've been kept so occupied that this blog has fallen by the wayside again lately. So much has gone on since my last update, I can't possibly remember it all, so I'll probably just touch on the highlights that stick out more than others in my cluttered mind.

Since Easter, we had a good two more weeks and then some of chilly weather with snow on the ground. It was close to May by the time all the snow had melted and a long overdue spring appeared. The birds showed up on time, but mother nature failed to follow suit so we were quite happy once everything else fell into place with the sun and all. The school year appears to have been on fast forward ever since basketball season ended with it quickly approaching the last day of school with less than a month left. We had a great weekend last week, though, with the Shrine Circus in Grand Forks at the UND hockey arena. Joe and Jodi drove both their vans over so we got a ride with Joe and spent the afternoon with their kids at the circus. Jodi's dad is a Shriner, so we got all free tickets, though we of course had to spend plenty on concessions and extras on the circus floor during intermission. We stopped and took a look at the 80 acres on the way back to Thief River.

This past week has been spent preparing for the summer months by signing the boys up for another season of Park & Rec baseball and Safety Camp for Daniel at Franklin Middle School. I also finally had an afternoon of free time this past week so I picked up some nice plants at Wally World and Aaron helped me plant geraniums and smaller mini viola plants in the old whiskey barrel planters out front of the house and in the planters out back. The barrels look nice for the first time since we got here and the Prowler cross country team and neighborhood folks now have something pleasing to look at when they run/walk by. The birds have also been busy doing their part to beautify the house. I now have matching robin's nests in the front and back of the house. There's one wedged between the rain gutter and eve on the front porch and another one the boys discovered this morning that's perched right on top of the back flood lights just outside the back door. It's nestled right between the two lights just above the motion sensor. I took it down just to see if there was an egg in it, but there was none so I put it back up there. I figure it's a good idea to leave the birds alone, as they'll do a good job controlling the insects, i.e. mosquitos.

We're just about through with choir for the year at church. We sang with the combined choirs tonight at Redeemer and then will sing at Zion tomorrow morning followed by Trinity and that's pretty much it for the summer until September or so. We also had the Sunday School appreciation dinner last Sunday and tomorrow is the last day of Sunday School with awards for perfect attendance. Preliminary indications are that both boys will receive a perfect attendance award this year (a major improvement over last year).

As we are entering the summer months, we are now experiencing some good rain this weekend and may even have some thunderstorms. It has helped a great deal with grass germination, as I'm trying to repair some of the grass adjacent to our front side walk. Minnesota dirt seems like Miracle-Gro all by itself with only a night or two of rain required before you have a lush green carpet of turf to run your bare toes through. I've already mowed the back lawn once and I suspect the mower will be getting a lot more use this year than last. Now if we can just keep the insect pests away (including the yellowjackets).

We had the school carnival at Challenger today with a silent auction, dunk tank, and games. Both boys managed to dunk the principal at least once and it was fun because it was overcast and the tank was filled with cold tap water to begin with so the principal really had a cold afternoon out there in the wind of the back parking lot. The boys played a lot of games and Aaron (I?) won a Twins baseball donated and autographed by Nick Punto and Joe Nathan that's in a nice little display cube. Aaron's quite proud of his new acquisition to say the least. We also went to see Spiderman 3 last night at the Galaxy Twin in town. You know a movie is better than most when the crowd actually extends into the parking lot around here. Of course folks around here often will go to the opening of an envelope, but it was so popular there at the theater last night it reminded me of the old days in the late 70s when mom and dad would take us out to the movies and there was hardly an open seat in the house. We picked up both Kasey and Dusty Grochow to go with us and several of the boys friends were there too. It was kind of funny in the middle of the movie, though. We were four rows back and in the row just in front of us with her dad was this little blonde girl, somewhere like kindergarten or first grade age, and she turned around in the middle of one of the low moments in the movie and asks Daniel to sit next to her and then when Daniel didn't know how to respond, she started asking me over and over again if Daniel could sit with her and I kept telling her, "Watch the movie..." and her Dad was obviously a little embarrassed, but what was funny was I thought the girl knew Daniel from school, but apparently he didn't know her at all when I asked him later. Pretty cute.

We just got back from Redeemer and I can smell the aroma of the meatballs in beef stroganoff sauce wafting over from the Crock-Pot in the kitchen, so I think I'm going to sign off here. I'll try to keep this site updated as much as possible as we enter the season of summer activities, but I may just post pictures without text from time to time.

Congratulations to Jen, Don, Nick, and Jake on the birth of Cody Jack this past week!

Nice April Fool's Joke, God...

Well, I woke up this April Fool's and looked out the window to see...yep...you guessed it...a bunch of huge snowflakes falling outside our windows. After a rather prolonged late dump of snow, we had all but melted our way out of it these past couple of weeks to the point we actually had a couple of days of rain this week and no ice left at all not to mention what appeared to be some greener blades of grass than usual for this time of year. Now the whole town is covered in a blanket of about 3 inches of wet snow. Turns out it's a good thing I got the 4X4 fixed after all... We just got home after an afternoon of an Easter egg scavenger hunt and egg coloring activity at Trinity with the K-5 kids. It was our first Easter activity there at church and the boys had a great time. I'll post some pictures on here in the near future, so bear with me.

In other events since my last post, Daniel had his 8th birthday at the water park with a good dozen or so of his friends from school. Of course he invited all boys and the same "token" girl he had invited last year, Samantha. Samantha's mom cracked up when she realized her daughter had again been chosen to represent the fairer half of Daniel's class. I think he had either a little too much fun or a little too much cake or both, though, as he ended up sick Friday night, but he's bounced back to his usual chipper self, so all's well that ends well.

The boys did well on the two days they delivered the Grand Forks paper for Joe and his kids. They each were given $20 for their efforts, so it was a good payday for them.

It's hard to believe yet another school year is just about in the books already and baseball season is just around the corner. Aaron will be "drafted" for his team this time around in the 10 and 11-year-old group and it will be "player pitched," so I know he's really hoping to get a chance to pitch. Thankfully he's already got cleats and I picked up a pair of them for Daniel so all they need is new jerseys/t-shirts, pants, and baseball socks to round out their equipment. We bought the last two aluminum "Street Rocket" street hockey sticks from Legends Sporting Goods just over a week ago and the boys have been practicing their skills pretty frequently lately. Aaron has gotten quite good at "dribbling" the street puck, which is a bright orange ball about the size of a billiard ball. We just need something for a net and we'd really be in business. It should be more fun now that we have snow again for a day or two. Speaking of which, it's not 7 hours later and the snow continues to fall outside...

I'm trying to write more here, but I'm about to fall asleep on the couch, so I think I'd better sign off for now lest I leave a trail of zzzzzzz's across the screen. Hope everyone has a great week!

Monster Icicle...

Nice Lawn Ornament!

Dylan, Daniel, and Travis...

Trinity Youth at Armory Hill February 2007

A Record For Icicles?

This week has been rather eventful what with the snow and recent transportation problems. It's snowed about three out of the five days this week and I've shoveled and shoveled and shoveled some more. At least I'm making good friends with our neighborhood mail carriers (Kjell's replacement included). I started the week off good by shoveling the public sidewalk out front of the house all the way south to the next block over, as the corner house hadn't been shoveling theirs at all (Kjell had some choice words for that house and said he would just skip that one). He told me not to shovel it next time and just leave it be. Apparently the municipal code here in TRF allows the City to give one warning and if the sidewalk remains unshoveled in any 24-hour period following a "snow event," they are then allowed to hire someone to remove the snow and the homeowner is then given the bill for snow removal, so a good incentive to keep the sidewalks clear. As I started the week off good, though, by shoveling the neighbors' walks on both sides of me, Mike, my neighbor to the south of us fired up his old snowblower and headed out at 9 p.m. Wednesday night and cleared off my sidewalk, the mailman's path between our houses that runs across our front lawns, as well as the sidewalk up and down the street, so I guess I earned some good kharma there.

In the middle of all this beautiful winter weather, the Weasel started acting up with a broken heater core. I realized on Sunday that we had no heat and I smelled antifreeze, which kind of narrowed the problem down a little. By Wednesday, I got it in to the Ford dealer and it was hanging on by only a pulley. They told me it would be a good five hours of labor, because they have to pull the whole dash out to get to the part and even if they did that, it wouldn't guarantee I'd have a working vehicle a year from now, so I figured I'd get every last mile out of it without the repair and then dispose of it. Turns out "every last mile" really meant about 10 miles... Come Thursday, the boys had early dismissal because of the snow and Aaron begged me to come pick them up at school, so against my better judgment, I hopped in the Weasel and headed off to Challenger. I made it only to Trinity before it stalled and after another 30 or so turns of the key, I got it started again, but decided to turn around instead of continue on to Challenger and it's a good thing I did. I managed to go back about three blocks and was turning right on Knight right where Terri Cuppett's house sits and before I could complete the turn, I heard the heater core fall off and the car stopped in mid-turn. One of Aaron's buddies from youth group, Jeff, lives just a couple houses over by Subway, though, and as his siblings are home schooled, I was able to head over there and use their phone to call Joe for help. As the car was blocking the intersection, Jeff (12) and his little sister (about 9) came out and helped try to push it, but it was not going to budge, so I then realized one of Thief River's finest was parked over at the China Buffet and had just gotten into his car to leave. I ran over and got his attention and he was nice enough to give me a shove off to the side of the road with his police cruiser. Joe arrived soon after and gave me a lift home.

I called the police department and they told me if I didn't move the car from Knight, I would not only be ticketed, but they would tow and impound it because of calendar parking for the snow plows the following morning. I called the wrecking yard and the guy told me he "won't even go out in this weather," so I went with Falls Radiator and when I told them the wrecking yard wouldn't do it, they muttered, "cheapskate." In the end, I got the car towed for $40 to the wrecker and the wrecker said he will pay me $50 for the scrap metal, so I guess I came out $10 ahead there... Joe came over this morning and we headed off to clear out the Weasel and then I yanked the old battery from the Blazer and embarked on the beginning of my unexpected journey to "resurrect" the wounded but not forgotten SUV. Steve at the Ford dealership said he'd work with me to repair or replace the transmission on it so I wouldn't have to come up with the entire expense at one time and I figure it's the best route to go because I have replaced just about all the other major parts on it including the whole exhaust system, brakes, serpentine belt, air conditioning, etc. so it should give me a good 3 to 4 years without major problems once I fix the tranny. I'm just looking forward to having four operating doors, power windows and locks, and above all having a better view of the roadway from the higher seats. Hopefully then this summer I can get it in to the local community college auto body program to get some of the kinks worked out and perhaps a new paint job, as it's fairly inexpensive.

So to get the Blazer fixed, I had to get a new battery for it and Joe drove me over to Wally World and we went in directly to the automotive area and there was no one in sight but an older lady in the car service area who pretty much ignored us. We stood there for an extended period after selecting a new battery and placing it on the counter and after a while Joe walked behind the counter, picked up Wal-Mart's phone and announced over the PA system that someone was needed in automotive. When nobody answered after another five minutes, he went back again and made another PA announcement, this time stating, "This is a customer in the automotive department. If anyone works here, we could use some assistance in the automotive department." It was pretty funny until the automotive manager came walking up and said it was "bad" that "we" did the PA announcement like that. Thankfully I knew the manager, though, as it was Leland Mott's little brother, Lonnie... :) A few other employees had come over at the same time and Joe managed to smooth it over, basically covering for Lonnie not being there so all was well that ended well.

In any event, we headed back home and I sunk the new battery into the Blazer and Joe helped me push it out of the garage. You know Joe and I are pretty big guys when just the two of us pushed it backwards out of the garage over the piled up snow. He was pushing by himself at first with not much movement, but then I came around front with him and in seconds it was out of the garage. It was like the football front line pushing a pair of tackling dummies out of the way. I'd guess we weigh in at a combined 665 pounds, a good match for the task at hand. I managed to start it up after it had been sitting for almost two years now and it still would only go forward in one gear, so I called the same tow truck (I'm going to put them on speed dial at this point with two tows in as many days) and had it towed to the dealer this afternoon. I'm hoping I can have it fixed by this time next week. Joe has been pretty nice with ferrying us around where we need to be. We'll probably just hoof it to church on Sunday, though, in our LPCs (Leather Personnel Carriers - shoes).

This afternoon was a good Kodak moment, I must say. Daniel promptly threw his backpack down on the front porch upon returning from school and headed outside to shovel snow from one pile to another and I headed over to the next door neighbor's to take a picture of the front of their house. I have never seen such a sight as that - their entire front entrance of the house was shielded by a string of icicles each measuring a good three feet minimum in length and I pulled one of them off that was actually one LONG one in excess of four feet that had melted together with three or four smaller ones and carried it over to Daniel and his buddy, Samuel. They held it between the two of them like a log so I could take a picture, then I put it upside down in our front yard with the pointed edges sticking up and it looked rather majestic that way. I'll post pictures of it hopefully this weekend. I would guess it weighs in at about 20 pounds and is a good four inches in diameter at its base.

So that should about do it for this week's update. We'll be learning the Drevlow's paper route for the Grand Forks Herald next week so we can cover for them starting a week from Sunday, so that will probably be the next update, i.e. how we manage to get up at 4 a.m. on a school day...

The Snow Has Finally Revealed Itself...

After one of the drier Minnesota winters on record (little snow), we have just been hit with some major snowfall this weekend. It's now going on about 6 hours of nonstop snow as I type this and I've shoveled the front walkway a good three times thus far. We went to Redeemer this afternoon for the combined choir performance of Trinity and Zion's choirs (not sure what happened to Redeemer's choir) and it was an adventure getting back and forth in this thick snow. As we were leaving, Christina, her son, Mateo, and the boys all piled into the Weasel and when they weren't looking, I bent over to grab a big handful of snow to nail the back window of the car with to surprise the boys. As I recoiled my arm to let loose the nicely rounded snowball, I heard Jerry Wigness from just behind me shout, "Don't throw it!!!" followed by laughter, as he rolled his window back up. With all the snow on the cars, I didn't have a clue he was parked right next to us. I had all but given up hope for a genuine snowy winter until now. I figure we have enough now to make it to spring without another snow storm. The timing of the snow is perfect too, as the Sunday school classes K-5 will be going on a sled outing we planned for Armory Hill tomorrow after church. We had planned it about three weeks ago really having no idea if there'd be any snow and half expecting a mediocre experience, but with this nice new base of snow it should be a blast. Aaron got a new inflatable "Snow Wedge" from his birthday that he's going to break in.

We've managed to stay fairly busy this month even in the absence of all the basketball practices and such. The boys still have Kingdom kids every other Thurday and that's always a good way to spend a couple of hours after school. Both boys had their parent-teacher conferences recently and it was a very positive report for them with Daniel further outpacing his peers in his reading at next year's level a year early and Aaron has made up major ground in his standardized test results that frankly was astonishing from only a year ago. Mr. Schafer had surgery on his shoulder just a few short weeks ago and is already out of his sling. Aaron had an art unit where they made figures out of modeling clay and one kid from Trinity in Aaron's class made a rather artistic rendering of a guy with his arm in a sling and it was called, "Schafer in a sling..." I didn't realize it until just recently, but Aaron's class actually has both fourth and fifth graders in it at the same time. I new Mr. Schafer was a "multi-age" teacher, but I didn't exactly know they were in the same room; I thought he rotated from one classroom to another, so that's kind of nice for Aaron to socialize with the kids a year ahead of him and see a broader range of material.

Before I forget, Daniel was rather witty again tonight with a rather intelligent comeback, proving that cartoons do sometimes have some educational material in them. The boys were playing in the Redeemer youth room and Aaron told me Daniel's thumb was "bleeding." I went in and checked on him to find him crying his eyes out with his thumb wrapped in a paper towel. Of course I expected there was some kind of hemorrhage I was going to be dealing with, but I had him pull the paper towel away and found he had somehow pinched his thumb in the door and had some minor divots taken out of the skin on either side of the thumb's knuckle, but no blood to speak of. I of course used the standard humor to relieve the pain and agony of the moment, suggesting I may have to "amputate" his thumb. He asked, "What's amputate, Dad?" I responded, "It's just removing your finger is all. You don't need it anymore now, do you??" Daniel then answered with a serious look on his face, "I DO need it Dad! I need an OPPOSABLE thumb!" I was speechless for a moment as I digested his most appropriate vocabulary usage at the ripe old age of 7 (almost 8) and asked him where he learned such an advanced concept and he told me "Timmy Turner" who is the star character on the Fairly Oddparents cartoon. Have no fear, though... He's not getting it all from TV. I was cleaning up some papers he had brought home from school last week and there was one page that had black and white pictures or drawings of ancient fossils on it and he was being asked to name the various periods in prehistoric times, i.e. mesozoic, cretacious, etc. I don't recall learning any of that until late middle school if not early high school, so it would appear they are cramming a lot more information in their noggins at much earlier ages than they used to.

Man, It's Cold!!!

This is my kitchen window this weekend. Note the thermometer reading in the lower right-hand corner (yes, that's a minus sign in front of the number).

Mixed Emotions...

I imagine many of you have heard the joke about the "definition of mixed emotions," i.e. watching your brand new Mercedes rolling off a cliff with your mother-in-law behind the wheel (actually I kind of like my mother-in-law). Well, today was one of those kinds of moments. Aaron had his basketball game this afternoon and they were short of coaches, so the head coach drafted me to coach the "blue" team, which happened to be playing against Aaron's team. Here I've been reffing games Aaron wasn't playing in, not being able to watch him at all and the first week in several that I was able to watch him, I ended up coaching his opposition. So... Here I was hoping Aaron would win, but also hoping the team I coached would win. In the end, Aaron's team lost, but only by 4 points, far better than most of their previous contests. The final score was 24 to 20. I was just happy to see Aaron make some real improvements, this time getting a nice clean steal and making a 12-footer. He was all smiles as his coaches cheered him on.

Daniel did great this week too, though the Wolverines played to a 16-16 tie. They have one more game, I believe, and then a pizza party right after the game. Us coaches are going to chip in some money to get some trophies and/or medals for awards. I'm really looking forward to the next season when I'll hopefully know some more about the fundamentals of the game.

Today was a great day for Aaron for another reason. He took his Minnesota achievement tests for math and reading this week and usually he has someone help with reading the test questions to him and there is something like 50 odd questions to answer and by the time the resource person arrived, Aaron had already gone through some 40-plus questions and was almost finished. He scored substantially higher than previously too, so the resource teacher was extremly impressed, at least enough to stop me on my way to basketball practice to recount his performance. A great day all around for Aaron, both athletically and academically. We finished the day with a trip to Wally World where we picked out PJs/PJ bottoms for the boys to wear tomorrow for pajama day at school. It was only 1 degree today, though, so I don't exactly envy them wearing PJ pants out there. I think I'll drive them to school rather than have them stand out at the bus stop. At least the good news on the horizon is daylight saviings will be coming along earlier than previously, on March 11, so we will be able to fit more recreation time into the weekdays.